COTABATO CITY, Philippines – A soldier and his wife were killed while four others, among them an Army lieutenant, were wounded in another roadside bombing in Maguindanao yesterday morning, just a day after the province was rocked by heavy clashes between military and Moro rebel forces.
The fatalities, Pfc. Nathaniel Nacilo and his wife, Edna, were on their way, along with other members of the Army’s 64th Infantry Battalion, to a roadside spring in Datu Unsay town to wash clothes and fetch drinking water when an improvised explosive went off just as they were passing by.
Lt. Col. Jonathan Ponce, spokesman of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, said four other soldiers – 2Lt. Ricky Organista, Pfc. Christopher Jemino, and Pvts. Ryan Cubilanis and Martin Mangantang – were wounded in the blast.
Police said the explosive was fashioned from live mortar projectiles rigged with a battery-operated blasting mechanism, similar to what wanted groups of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) had used in recent bombings on national highways crisscrossing Maguindanao.
“There could have been more casualties had the (improvised explosive went off) as passenger vehicles were passing by,” Ponce said.
Ponce said the roadside bombing was an apparent retaliation for the military’s clearing operations in the past three days in several rebel enclaves in the adjoining Maguindanao towns of Talayan, Guindulungan and Talitay.
Rebels earlier had tried to launch bombings in springs frequented by soldiers in Guindulungan and Talayan, but Army ordnance experts, tipped off by villagers, had promptly defused them.
Eid Kabalu, MILF spokesman, denied the MILF’s hand on the roadside bombing in Datu Unsay town.
“There are ongoing military-MILF encounters in that town and in the towns of Talayan and Guindulungan at the time that incident was reported to have occurred. It could be possible that those victims were casualties in one of the encounters,” Kabalu said.
Journalists who wanted to go to the site of the roadside blast, however, were stopped at an Army checkpoint in Talayan. – With James Mananghaya